MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Arrest finally made!!!!

Arrest finally made!!!!


Idaho murders: 28-year-old man arrested in Pennsylvania

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/idaho-murders-police-hold-news-conference-friday-afternoon/story?id=95976902

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That's a good start. Idaho does have the death penalty, so hopefully the investigation is clean.

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Here's hoping. If any crime deserves it, it's this.

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good job by the police. looks like a burglary gone bad.

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Just found this out an hour ago and its great news.

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I'm not so sure burglary was the motivation. Not a lot of details have come out, but Police said he entered the home with the intent to commit murder.

He posted this on Reddit (now deleted) but luckily people got a screenshot.

https://twitter.com/dontfckwjustice/status/1608908913801596928

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He's a Ph.D. grad student at Washington State University studying criminal justice and criminology...

Well, he's gonna get an extended crash course in that now!!!!

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He's regularly been compared to Bundy over the past weeks by various pundits, profilers, etc. and even more so now, with the emergence of that revelation.

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Crazy accurate, isn't it??

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Yeah, he was referred to as "a very intelligent sociopath" on a program I watched just minutes ago.

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I wonder if he'll waive his right to a lawyer and try to defend himself in court?? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

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I remember Bundy doing that. I'm guessing he's going to fight extradition, which could possibly drag that process out for months.

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Apparently he's waived extradition.

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Interesting and good news. That means more detailed information about some of the evidence leading to his arrest will be available in the near future.

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I'm looking forward to it, because I'm a nosy bitch!

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I'm a true crime junkie, always ready for more info.

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Aren't we all LOL?? 😅😅😅😅

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I remember Bundy doing that.

Exactly.

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Just learned from one of my favorite true crime channels on YouTube that he was a heavy heroin user in high school. Also, the FBI had him under surveillance for several days prior to the arrest, which was via a SWAT team swooping in at 3AM. How ironic and fitting is that time?

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Apparently he posted on 4Chan that he was hiding out in "shithole Pennsylvania".

And the fact that he posted on 4Chan tells you that the Internet has lost another Incel. Yay!

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If the guys hadn't been drunk/stoned, they might have stood a chance.

It has to be either tips and/or DNA. IF DNA, I'm wondering if it was geneologically traced, since college folks don't normally have their DNA or prints in a database, more likely an older relative would have done a 23&me..

Just speculatin'.

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"...genealogically traced..."

That's how The Golden State Killer was finally caught after 40+ years. It was that case which opened up this new avenue for law enforcement.

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Geneological DNA tracking was how he was identified, apparently.

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Yeah, I've been seeing those reports. Apparently that's how BTK was also caught, through his daughter.

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Yes. In his case, they made him thru his vehicle and the evidence from the disk he sent in. They used the daughter's DNA to close the case. But that's different. They already had their main suspect targeted.

As I'm sure you already know, the great innovation of geneological DNA techniques is that they can target a completely unknown perp now, if a reasonably close relative has made their DNA available to a database, an increasingly likely prospect. I've read that 60% of white people could now be identified in this manner. Anyway, that was the case with this killer. Without this technology, they likely would not have been able to get him unless/until he re-offended & was caught and required to submit a sample.

Losing our privacy is generally a bummer, but it does have benefits in terms of security, crime-stopping.

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Wounds being reopened for this poor, distraught woman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7JRsJjJ6u4

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it seems the car was the key to tracing him.

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How could the family in Pennsylvania not have wondered, even been suspicious? Their son, arriving home from that part of the country, driving the very make and model of car that law enforcement was urgently looking for?

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Hm, interesting. Links ?

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This is such recent, breaking news and I don't have a link yet. I heard one report today briefly announcing a heavy police presence around the home of his family, not allowing anyone near it.

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They just might have been. But like Brian Laundrie's parents, they might have been trying to protect him or even just hoping there was no connection. Hard to know right now.

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I made the same comparison to the Brian Laundrie case.

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They might have even gotten a tip from within his family. Anything's possible at the moment.

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Gentlemen! I’ve never seen such behavior in the war room on New Years Eve!! 😀

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That's why it's called the "war room."😁

Happy New Year, btw!🍺

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Happy New Year!

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sounds like good old fashioned police work. going through hours of traffic and other videos in the area.

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This case seems so paradoxical. He was pursuing a PhD in Criminology/Criminal Justice, yet appeared to be very stupid in how he committed this crime. The crime scene had actually been described as "sloppy." His vehicle was spotted leaving that scene, which was what led LE to issue an appeal to the public about info on it. Shortly after that, a night manager at a nearby gas station remembered seeing such a car and turned over surveillance video of it speeding past her business. So, it had already been spotted twice within the time frame of the murders and how conspicuous is a white car in the middle of the night when most people are asleep? Yeah, how many other times do you suppose that car was captured on camera during his cross country trek to PA?

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was pursuing a PhD in Criminology/Criminal Justice, yet appeared to be very stupid in how he committed this crime.

Maybe he was drunk too??

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Maybe not drunk but had just enough "liquid courage" in his system to be uninhibited enough to finally fulfill a long-held fantasy?

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not exactly a criminal mastermind using his own car. i put the garbage out and i assume the neighbor's camera picks it up.

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People don't know how to hide shit better. That said I'm glad he is caught.

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Well, that neighborhood was known for being especially dark, no cameras, because of all the wild frat parties constantly going on. I think the killer was banking on that. There was actually police body cam footage released of officers busting underage drinkers during the very time they believe the murders were being committed, with the crime scene just yards in the background. Ironic and eerie!

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I have heard a totally unsubstantiated internet rumor that it was his own mother that turned him in.

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Very possible. I mean, there's family loyalty. And then there's living in the same house with a quadruple murderer who people are saying was very mentally disturbed with OCD and extreme behaviors. So maybe for their own safety she turned him in. Or another family member or someone who's close to the family. A person like that could pretty much hurt anyone after what they've already done.

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Now I've heard the totally unsubstantiated internet rumor that his mother told the police he'd been in the town next to Moscow, Idaho, with her white Elantra with out of state plates, not that she actually turned him in. For what unsubstantiated internet rumors are worth.

Okay, I've heard a bit about this guy, mainly that he was a socially awkward fat kid, who late in his high school career lost a shit-ton of weight and became a socially awkward asshole and bully... which has of course led to speculation about drugs. So if this guy was the psycho on drugs I suspect he was, who knows what his family thought of him. Maybe he was abusive, maybe they lived in fear of him, maybe the whole set of rumors about his mother's actions are bullshit. There's been a lot of bullshit.

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I think if she did turn him in/provided the hot tip, or anybody else in the household or close to the household did, I think it was definitely necessary for their safety and I wouldn't hold it against anybody in the family who might have done it. I mean take for example Brian Laundrie's parents. They were definitely trying to protect him. Now I'm not saying that the crime he committed wasn't terrible, and that it was wrong for his parents to try to protect him, but his was a crime of passion which is not quite on the same level as what this psychopath did. I mean I'm not saying it was right that his parents protected him, but it would be understandable in a way. Whereas with this freak's family, if they did turn him in, absolutely did the right thing for their own safety and everybody else's safety. And as far as the bullshit, yeah that's pretty much how it goes with all stories/happenings where the details are still unknown. People speculate and talk. It's just part of human nature.

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If even a fraction of rumors about this guy are true, it was incredibly brave of his family to do anything to smooth the course of justice. If he really is a bully, a psycho, or a thrill killer, then if he's ever released on bail or walks free - their lives will be in danger.

But I loathe people like the Laundries, who protect family members from the consequences of their actions... because what better way to raise a remorseless killer than to always protect them and shield them from the consequences of their actions, no matter how horrific their crimes! "Aw, you killed your sweet girlfriend honey? How awful for you! I'll make you some cocoa and drive you to a hideout!", goddammit! If the rumors about this killer's family are true, well, at least there are some decent people left in the world.

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And now I've heard that BK's father flew out to Idaho to drive him home, in the white Elantra, and the family released a statement saying that they are fully cooperating with the authorities.

So I REALLY want to know the story with the parents... did they actually have any part in turning him in?????????

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Odd. I wonder how that came about? I wonder what the purpose was of the father going out there and then them driving back together? The dates are odd too. He didn't go back to Pennsylvania for over a month after the killings. He went out there on Dec 17th I guess with his father according to his lawyer. The killings happened on Nov 13th. I think the date that the police announced they were looking for the car was Dec 7th. And then Dec 17th he went to Pennsylvania with his father for the holidays. Could have been a different family member that called in a tip, who knows? Could have been an aunt and uncle a cousin, a family friend. Maybe none of those tips came from the family or anybody close to them. It's just too soon to know right now. Once they unseal the probable cause affidavit, then we'll have some more details.

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I suspect that BK made some sort of admission or confession to the family, or that they figured out that he'd done it. That's only a suspicion, of course, but my guesses haven't been too far off the mark so far.

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Yeah, you seem like a genius🙄

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You're VERY goid at making other people seem like geniuses.

Yourself... no.

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Nice story Kojak😀

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Is this week's little tantrum over?

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I’m here all week you you phony.

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I'm not a phony, I'm just as bitchy as I seem to be!

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No doubt.

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Actually, it's become more common than just weekly.

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I saw that a ton of his posts were deleted, perhaps the Mods' tolerance for his tantrums is running out.


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Btw, fascinating, insightful interview here, I thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk5j1nmk6lo

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Telling idiots they are idiots is a tantrum now?

Nonsense.

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Did you notice the Mods deleted a shit-ton of your posts?

I think their patience with your little tantrums is running out.

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Boo Hoo. Make up more silly stories detective.

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I tried to warn you.

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Baloney🙄

You are a phony.

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The baloney is all yours, I'm a vegetarian!

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Cool. Go eat a pickle.

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If I want something sour I can just talk to you! AHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

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Lame.
Nice fake laugh dummy.

You pretend to be something you are not, good luck with that phony.

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Okay, fun's fun but we're running out of horizontal space and I've got to go to work. Enough flirting.

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Go flirt with yourself, never with me🖕

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Of course he noticed. That's why he was hiding and sulking for about 3 days.

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Actually my phone died which I explained to another poster Sherlock.

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So the Dad maybe coerced him to come home? Maybe it was something like that or else why wouldn't dude just drive to Pennsylvania on his own?

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Who knows, maybe dad was helping him bury the murder weapon a few states away, or trying to find a way to make the white Elantra vanish. I can only speculate

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I think today's the day he goes back to Idaho. Maybe we'll get more details now.

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Yeah, watched a brief interview with his PA attorney awhile ago.

An ironic, maybe even darkly amusing headline prior to that was seeing that he had been studying DNA and forensics in pursuit of his PhD prior to his arrest.

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It's like those pyros that join the FD.

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Yeah, guys who are part of volunteer FDs and start wildfires.🙄 It's always been a crazy world we live in.

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If you're interested in very detailed, in-depth analyses of this case, I recommend this YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/c/grizzlytruecrime She is excellent, constantly has esteemed experts as guests.

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So apparently they got a DNA match through his father because he had done a DNA genealogy search in the past. Maybe this was the family tip thing. Like an inadvertent family tip. But, who knows? More craziness to add to the mix: he and his father got pulled over twice on their way back to Pennsylvania. So now people are speculating that they got pulled over on purpose because they were being tracked by the authorities. Or it could just be that they got pulled over in Indiana because they were speeding. The mystery deepens.

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My completely out-of-my-ass theory is that the parents had already known there was something deeply amiss with their son, and that the father flew out to take Bryan home because he had a pretty good idea who committed the murders in Idaho. I don't know if Kohberger Sr. was taking his son back home to shelter him from the authorities, to keep him from doing any more harm, or as a preliminary to turning him in, but I suspect there was a LOT of tension in that car and that's why they were driving badly.

Of course if a respectable white family with no priors made some minor driving mistakes en route the police wouldn't do anything more than give out a ticket... and take note of exactly who was driving a white Elantra away from Idaho.

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So apparently they've been on to him for a long time and they did purposely pull him over knowing it was him. And they got DNA off of the knife sheath that was at the home in Moscow Indiana. And then they matched it to his father through garbage they found at the parents' home. And now that they have him in custody they have a real one-on-one DNA match so there's no doubt. Cell phone pings show that he had been stalking the house numerous times. They had a lot of information that they just kept quiet about. So they were doing a damn good job behind the scenes. Very methodical with their investigation. And for someone who is such a smart individual, he did a lot of stupid things. Such as leaving the knife sheath behind. Having his phone on while he was stalking the house in the weeks and months leading up to the murder. Although the pings did show that during the murders he shut his phone off. I guess he thought that that was the smart thing to do lol.

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What I'm wondering is how that lengthy, expensive college education has been funded over the years. That family has a history of ongoing financial trouble, debts, bankruptcies. The only job BK was reported to have had, was as a security guard at a school before he entered college. There have been a lot of comments about how highly intelligent he was, yet I've never seen anything about a scholarship.

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Student loans?

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But wouldn't it be difficult to secure those loans with that kind of a background?

It's also interesting how one profiler I listened to was so accurate when he said the killer was probably of modest means, since that knife that was being mentioned so much is cheap and poorly made.

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It’s not difficult to buy a kitchen knife and very large hiking boots at a tag sale stupid.

Not every criminal is a genius you big fat dummy.

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This post only goes to show how you're the stupid one and clueless about this case. Why would a perpetrator want very large hiking boots to go into an older home in the middle of the night, known for its creaky, noisy, wooden floors? The knife involved was constantly being referred to as military/Rambo style. The guy arrested actually was referred to as a genius by some, back where he hails from.

Keep on projecting and making an ass out of yourself, dumb shit.

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According to those that know the region, Kohberger is from a part of Pennsylvania commonly referred to as "Pennsyltucky", because there's a lot of rural poverty there. It's probably easier there to stand out academically and get called a "genius" than in, say, Silicon Valley, and hopefully he was able to take advantage of some sort of financial aid available to low-income students.

But no, we just don't know how his school career was funded, maybe he qualified for financial aid, maybe he took out student loans, maybe he did get scholarships and whoever granted is too embarrassed by that to admit it now. Or maybe Kohberger was dealing drugs, according to old friends he'd been a fat kid in high school and suddenly lost a lot of weight and became "a completely different person" (an asshole and a bully), which of course makes me think "drugs!". Steroids or stimulants at a guess, and well, drugs cost money too. How'd he support both an education and a drug habit?

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"It's probably easier to stand out academically..."

True but I've definitely seen a consistency in all the reports I've watched where former classmates, teachers and professors all referred to him as exceptionally intelligent, albeit quiet, socially awkward, a loner.

Yeah , he was pudgy in high school and became a heroin addict prior to his senior year, which compelled one former classmate to comment he had become "thin as a rail, aggressive, always wanting to fight, a completely different person." He had a few friends who said he was constantly bullied, sometimes cruelly, and the majority of it came from girls. So the bullied became a bully by his senior year and we see the earliest indicators of being on a path of revenge. He entered rehab, got clean, resumed his interest in pursuing criminology studies, but this guy was the quietly seething, festering, stereotypical "walking time bomb."

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I'm skeptical about the reports of him being "bullied by girls". There are several reports of him being inappropriate with women and getting very angry when they didn't go for it, so it's entirely possible that those girls in high school were defending themselves and not "bullying".

He seems to have had trouble reading social cues, which has led to speculation about the Autism Spectrum, and even if he was highly intelligent, he doesn't seem to have been willing to use his high IQ to get better at interacting with other human beings, including female ones, so it's not like he's some sort of overall genius.

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🤪

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I believe it was DNA. Plus I think the video they had of the white car he was in was probably clear enough to see what he looked like or there were characteristics about the car that matched with one that he owns. Can definitely have been a recent tip as well about the car within the last couple of days. Then that may be when they got a DNA match once they had him. All will be revealed shortly.

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Cool.

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I'm leaning towards the forensic evidence myself. It's been almost 7 weeks now, which is the usual time frame for the results of those types of tests to come through, and they would be ironclad enough to give LE the confidence to seek an arrest warrant.

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Right. We can safely assume, given that DNA was a factor and that he has been arrested, it was positively matched.

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What I've heard is that his car was photographed nearby, and they found his DNA at the crime scene. Which isn't necessarily enough for a conviction in itself, apparently there were dozens of white Elantras in town at the time, and there were so many parties at that house that half of Idaho must have left DNA traces there.

What I'm really curious about is whether he was doxxed by the 4Channers. Apparently this guy posted disgusting details of the crime on 4Chan and said he was hiding in "shithole Pennsylvania", and I want to know if they informed the FBI and/or tracked his location.

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Good stuff. Yeah, there's forensic evidence and there's noise. Somehow HIS car and HIS DNA became investigative targets.

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There has been much discussion of white Elantras in the crime chatter, and the last time I looked in someone said there were 90 white Elantras registered in Moscow, Idaho. Which makes sense, college towns are full of cheap cars (I know, I live in a college town).

We'll see, information is minimal right now, the police have been tight with information for excellent reasons, which was probably a good idea as some of the people following this case have made major nuisances of themselves.

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It was geneological DNA that targeted the perp :

CNN reported, through a source, that investigators “honed in on Kohberger as the suspect through DNA evidence and by confirming his ownership of a white Hyundai Elantra seen near the crime scene.”

Police had widely publicized their search for such a vehicle in their press statements.

According to CNN, “genetic genealogy techniques were used to connect Kohberger to unidentified DNA evidence,” before the DNA “was run through a public database to find potential family member matches.” Further investigation then “led to him as the suspect,” the source told CNN.

In 2018, after genealogical DNA techniques through an open-source database called GEDMatch were used to find the Golden State Killer, a study found that genealogical DNA investigations could be used to identify “about 60% of white Americans,” according to Science.org.

“If you’re white, live in the United States, and a distant relative has uploaded their DNA to a public ancestry database, there’s a good chance an internet sleuth can identify you from a DNA sample you left somewhere,” Science.org reported.

A Columbia University study found that by “combining an anonymous DNA sample with some basic information such as someone’s rough age, researchers could narrow that person’s identity to fewer than 20 people by starting with a DNA database of 1.3 million individuals,” Science.org reported.
https://heavy.com/news/bryan-kohberger-genealogical-dna/

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I came here to post this, you beat me to it. Eh guess I'll find another kung fu clip...

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This cat reminds me of the Serial Arsonist Murderer who was a Captain in the Glendale FD, specializing in Arson Investigation - he used to give lectures :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr

Why he evaded the DP I can't answer - among his victims, a 2 year old baby.

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I'm reminded of the Craigslist killer. He (Phillip Markoff) was a medical student with a promising future, engaged to be married, yet still committed these horrible crimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Markoff

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Yes. Strange people are strange. There have been at least 6 or so serial killers with IQs ranging from the upper 130s to the 180s. Leopold & Loeb, celebrated child killers, were off the charts.

Kazinsky had a higher IQ than Einstein. He's a fellow I do think, given the CIA meddling and getting promoted way out of his emotional/physical age cohort in school, might have been formed more than born. Also a lengthy isolation as an infant in hospital, which his parents said had a profound effect upon his behavior afterward.

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Would police withhold info on whether the 3 girls were sexually assaulted? I think he was stalking them and the boyfriend being there changed the situation.

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They said from the beginning that there was no sexual assault. I'm presently watching a favorite true crime channel where this guy is being discussed by experts. There was a comment made awhile ago that evidence is beginning to emerge that he was following at least two of the girls on social media.

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